Virtual Tour of Jerusalem with Jewish History Soundbites Host Yehuda Geberer: The Davidka Story

and this is really the story of your july until today is that we have the old and we have the new on one hand we have the old the old buildings the old story and the old the old way of doing things and the tradition and to keep things the way they always were that's one path that yerushalayim takes from then until today and then we have the new let's change let's build it up let's do things differently and these two paths converge sometimes they complement each other sometimes there's conflict and we'll see how those two paths actually come come together to build up the yerushalayim that we see we're now going to go to our first stop which gives this whole key car its name kikar davidka and we'll start over here come with me this way and what we have is this no any questions until now any questions quick quick quick check to the zoom no questions yet okay and we'll get back to the birthdays soon so the first stop let me see look at this impressive looking artillery piece but don't let it fool you it's not impressive at all this artillery tillery piece was called the davidka the name the guy who built it his name was david so they called it the davidka and he built it to for the hagana to use the palmach to use during the israeli war of independence when the state of israel is founded they need weapons because as soon as the british leave in may of 1948 the local arabs the palestinians as well as the surrounding arab countries egypt syria lebanon jordan transjordan what it was called at the time iraq they're all they simultaneously attack them and how are the jews living in israel at the time going to defend themselves not a simple task they need first of all weapons to defend themselves literally to survive not more than that that's all they ask for and they need weapons how are they going to get weapons the americans did not allow anyone to sell weapons at the time to israel the new country there was an arms embargo you weren't allowed to sell weapons stalin for reasons of his own which is hard to understand it's hard to figure out soviet russia at the time but he using czechoslovakia as a proxy he sells planes to the new country of israel and there's planes that are brought from czechoslovakia and they're brought to that's the first planes of the israeli air force so they have some planes they have homemade bullet factories they take some weapons from the british they buy weapons on the black market remember this is just three years after world war ii there's gun running and they try to get it and they try to different things and by the way they have a few planes sitting in tel aviv that they got from czechoslovakia through stalin what are they going to do with these planes who's exactly flying them so there's another interesting twist to the story and that brings you guys in america into the picture because it's three years after world war ii and a lot of 550 000 american jews serve in the american army during world war ii in the pacific and in the european theater and and now they're back home many of them are assimilated american jews have nothing to do with the jewish community or judaism yiddish they're not religious and they're definitely not zionists and i recently watched a a documentary telling the story of what's known as the mahal fighters a group of american jews who were soldiers in the american army during world war ii who were recruited by the haganah to come to israel and fight for the new jewish state and they were convinced to do it and one of them was interviewed and he was actually a pilot in one of those planes that i mentioned and he describes it and it's like it's as if he's talking a story that's like too too crazy to even be believed and he describes that he gets a knock at the door he's at his parents home after he had just recently arrived two years before after being abroad overseas flying missions for the american air force and he goes and there's a knock at the door and there's two people at the door and they say we're from the hagana in palestine and we'd like to speak to you and he says what can i do for you and he says well we the jewish people in palestine are making a jewish state really that's so nice enjoy what does that have to do with me they say well well well we heard that you were a pilot in the american army in the american air force during world war ii and he says yes i was he says well we need you the jewish people need you we need you to fly planes the egyptian army is close by they want to come to tel aviv they want to destroy the new state before it even gets off the ground the jewish people needs you and he says that he decided he's going to come he had nothing to do with it with with judaism he had nothing to do with zionism he had nothing to do with the jewish state he comes he gets off he gets off the tel aviv and again you can't make this up and he says okay now what and a guy meets him and he says ah are you the pilot guy he says yeah i'm the pilot he says there are the planes and he points to the end of the airport and he says okay what do you want me to do with the planes he says the egyptian army is down there go get them that's it yeah that's it you gotta go and now that story has nothing to do with the vidco but it has everything to do with the davidka because it gives you an idea and it gives you a sense of what they were up against at the time so that we get to the david the vic is a homemade weapon they make six of them in a homemade factory building artillery artillery pieces okay and and and it was a lousy engineer who built it did not do a great job it had bad aim and it sometimes exploded too early it was dangerous it didn't get very far and the worst part of it was is that it made a horrifying noise when you shot the davidka it made this screeching loud noise that and which is great for surprise you're trying to surprise the enemy you don't want anyone to hear you shoot the davidka everyone knows what's coming so the whole davidka thing didn't work out some hagana units had a davinci with them like i said there were six of them but they didn't really use them very much because there wasn't much to do with the davitka so how can we put it in such a prominent place and to show everyone that this is what it was and this is what we used to uh to win the war of independence the answer is is because paradoxically parrot however you say that it worked out they used the davidka and and and it did work out what happened in the battle for tsfass up north which fast you're also familiar with the attack on sfas was bloody and long and there were people killed on both sides but at some point during the battle the palmach unit shot the davidka being that was only three years after world war ii how did world war ii end the united states air force dropped the atom bomb on hiroshima and nagasaki and japan blowing up two cities with these two bombs no one knew much about the technology of the atom bomb but everyone knew that there's this big dangerous bomb out there that can do a lot of damage very quick and here they shoot the davidka and it makes this screeching huge loud noise and everyone starts to flee the arabs though most of sas at the time was arabs do you know that ara that was 80 percent arab at the time it was not a jewish city very small jewish population it was mostly an arab population and they start to run for their lives they say the jews have the bomb the jews have the bomb let's get out of here and they the haganai units walk into us they walk into homes there are beds made there's slippers under the bed there's hot water in a tea kettle on the oven that's how quickly people ran out and the battle for its fast was won because of this defective weapon so perhaps we can understand that there was someone else fighting the battle for the people for the haganah who was making sure that the battle was one and it wasn't just the hagan it wasn't just the davidka